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Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

techxplore.com

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Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

#41

Post by drewmol »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #24
maltalex wrote: post #5

What’s worse - sucking in a bird into a jet engine or a bird-scaring drone?

Sucking a bird into a jet engine, obviously. Was this a rhetorical question? The jet engine is mounted to a plane. It's designed to withstand bird strikes without exploding - they literally blast frozen turkeys into it with an air cannon - but they can still cause engine out situations that result in crashes or emergency landings and risk the lives of the hundreds of people on board. Not to mention the huge repair co…

He was pondering what's worse for a bird: extremely low occurance but surely instantaneous death, or getting to live knowing you'll be driven from your homeland to eventual extinction from robot invaders and wind turbines.

Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

#42

Post by geuis »

Interesting. But I’m getting tired of hearing the misuse of “teaching” in regards to software engineering. Unless the software is using machine learning, i.e neural networks, it’s not teaching. Genetic algorithm? Evolving. Anything else, programming.

Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

#43

Post by oh_sigh »

pluto9 wrote: post #31
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he's a bird?

It is not obvious to me that a bird will flee from anything that approaches it, regardless of past experience, simply "because he's a bird". See above about city pigeons. Or aggressive geese at the park. Or birds that get sucked into jet engines because they apparently don't consider a jumbo jet to be an obstacle worth avoiding, hence this conversation.

Even city-dwelling pigeons have a personal space bubble that they will try to protect if possible. It may be just a foot or two but it is still there.

Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

#44

Post by asteli »

inamberclad wrote: post #16

I don't think pilots would be entirely opposed to this kind of tech. While I don't think many pilots trust drone operators to be responsible in any way (I don't, since I don't think many of them know the airspace system or where their nearby airports are), they might be okay with unmanned aerial systems operated by the local airport authority, since they could likely geofence them in such a manner that they'd never c…

I'm not a pilot, but at 3000 feet AGL, you have a lot more room for emergency maneuvering / diverting back to origin or alternate right?

I remember hearing something about how many small aircraft incidents occur at low altitude on takeoff or landing, partly because it's harder to recover from a stall condition (perhaps engine-out as well?) at low altitude...

Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

#47

Post by shawn »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #24
maltalex wrote: post #5

What’s worse - sucking in a bird into a jet engine or a bird-scaring drone?

Sucking a bird into a jet engine, obviously. Was this a rhetorical question? The jet engine is mounted to a plane. It's designed to withstand bird strikes without exploding - they literally blast frozen turkeys into it with an air cannon - but they can still cause engine out situations that result in crashes or emergency landings and risk the lives of the hundreds of people on board. Not to mention the huge repair co…

I like how there are three different interpretations of the question.

Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

#48

Post by pluto9 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #43
pluto9 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not obvious to me that a bird will flee from anything that approaches it, regardless of past experience, simply "because he's a bird". See above about city pigeons. Or aggressive geese at the park. Or birds that get sucked into jet engines because they apparently don't consider a jumbo jet to be an obstacle worth avoiding, hence this conversation.

Even city-dwelling pigeons have a personal space bubble that they will try to protect if possible. It may be just a foot or two but it is still there.

The smaller that bubble gets, the greater the chance of a drone actually striking a bird, which could become a major legal liability [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migratory_Bird_Treaty_Act_of_1...

Re: Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

#50

Post by WiseWeasel »

ap3 wrote: post #14

Wonder if this can be used to move bird flocks away from wind-turbines ?

It might be cheaper to enclose the blades' path in cages, or add more (possibly dummy) blades to make the path appear more filled, if that's been a problem.

Maybe a ring around the tips of the blades, and the blades double as spokes. They'd be ugly, but birds would fly into them less, and power output would get slightly smoothed by the weight shifted to the exterior of the wind wheel.

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